Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

  The Chicago office of the Department of Energy sent the same safety inspector who had signed off on their adjusted operating plan only a few days before. He seemed upset that he’d been fooled by “that female physicist” until someone told him Nala had been killed in the accident. Then he quieted down.

  DOE managers and engineers arrived, some from out of state. They set up monitoring equipment at the edge of the pit, sampled the air, and photographed the magically floating light in its center from every angle.

  Later, hazard inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived. None of the visitors could provide any insight into the accident, and their only recommendation was to suspend operations. Given the damage, restarting operations wasn’t even an option.

  Those who were already there, the team of physicists and engineers working at Fermilab, continued to be the best source of ideas as to what had gone wrong and what they might do differently. Most of the assessment fell to Jan Spiegel.

  15

  Electricity

  The hot Texas sun and southern humidity were a powerful combination. Davis Garrity took off his suit coat and laid it across the seat of his rental car, hoping his neatly pressed shirt would hold up for another hour. Today’s meeting was outdoors by design.

  He took shelter under a lonely live oak tree, the power generating station’s nod to landscaping. The sparse shade did little to relieve the steam bath of ranch country east of Austin.

  The facility was one of the largest in the world. On one side was a railyard. Three times each day, a long train of more than a hundred cars pulled up and unloaded its contents. Forty-five thousand tons of coal a day, every day. In the center of the expansive complex were four enormous steel buildings, each one larger in bulk than any of the gleaming skyscrapers in downtown Austin. Coal entered each building via a covered conveyor belt. Electricity came out the other side, carried by high-voltage towers that disappeared across the rolling hills toward Austin and San Antonio.

  Towering five hundred feet into the air above each of the four buildings stood a gray concrete smokestack. Two of the stacks poured a whitish cloud into the sky. A third stack did the same, but since it was venting through a carbon-capture system, the smoke density was somewhat lower.

  The fourth stack, the one closest to Davis, was topped with the newest symbol of clean energy—a blue-and-orange Garrity Cap. Its bold colors and placement high above ground allowed it to be seen by anyone within twenty miles of the facility. Not a whiff of smoke came out.

  Garrity pulled out an oversized sheet of paper and compared his client site sketch to the real thing. The sketch’s simplicity made it more likely to be reprinted, posted online and presented on television news. Free publicity.

  He had a second diagram in the works that explained how the containment dome was set up and managed. Davis didn’t really understand that part of the equation, but his Romanian partners did. He’d been lucky to make the connection. A friend of a friend. A few phone calls, and he had been put in touch with a science lab in Romania of all places. What they did and how they did it was fancy footwork as far as Davis was concerned, but the Romanians claimed they could do the same thing that the US lab had done. Fermilab, the one that was in the news these days.

  Best of all, the Romanians seemed anxious to get their foot in the door, and an industrial application in the United States was just the ticket. Davis had a good imagination. He didn’t need to know exactly how this extradimensional space thing worked, only that it did work. Within two weeks, the Romanians had proven their ability to perform the space-science magic and a few days later Davis had a signed support contract.

  Davis grinned like a kid who’d just discovered the hidden cookie jar. Manufacturing cost, a mere forty thousand dollars. Installation cost, not much more. Operating costs, relatively cheap thanks to low-cost Romanian scientists. For less than three hundred grand, he had just eliminated more than five million tons of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other emissions. Conventional technology couldn’t do half the job at a thousand times the price.

  With the Garrity Cap, ElecTrek’s operating costs would plummet, the citizens would get their electricity and nothing else but clean, sweet Texas air. And Davis… well, this gig was like printing money, with a hundred more customers lined up once he was done.

  A black car with a state government license plate appeared from behind the nearest of the generating stations. It pulled up to the parking lot where Davis stood. Two men got out.

  Davis reached out a hand. “Stan, how are you?”

  Stan Wasserman introduced the heavyset man beside him as Ralph Lewis, head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state agency that approved environmental permits and provided oversight for utilities.

  “Commissioner, it’s a great pleasure to meet you,” Davis said, shaking the hand of the unexpected official. He knew Lewis by reputation; most citizens did too. An industry insider elevated to a government official, Lewis was well known for his colorful approach to regulations. In a TV interview that had gone viral, he had been quoted as saying that since scientists couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about climate change, they shouldn’t be the ones setting limits on industrial emissions. When asked who should, he had famously replied, “Naturally, the people who know it best. Industry.”

  Davis didn’t care what the rules were or who made the decisions, as long as those rules resulted in an expenditure by the power companies. The bigger the expense, the better. It just meant more savings once the Garrity Cap was installed.

  Lewis’s grip was strong and his voice gruff. “You put that colored cap on the stack?”

  “Yes, sir,” Davis answered. “The Garrity Cap. Zero emissions forevermore.”

  “So Stan told me. And it doesn’t matter what they burn—the type of coal?”

  “No, sir, they can choose whatever source of coal they want. Carbon emissions will still be zero. Sulfur too.”

  The commissioner turned toward the tall smokestack, seeming to judge for himself whether emissions were indeed zero. He waved at Wasserman. “You sure number four is still running?”

  Stan Wasserman laughed. “Hard to believe, Ralph, but we’ve got unit four running at maximum turbine speed today. Doing the same for the other three units too… comparing apples to apples.”

  The commissioner nodded, his stubby fingers rubbed across his chin. “This could be good, real good. Will ya switch to Texas coal?”

  Wasserman shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Whether we’re burning subbituminous from Wyoming or lignite from Texas, once you exclude emissions control, the cost per BTU is pretty similar. Clean coal, dirty coal. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Don’t call it dirty,” Commissioner Lewis said. “Rename it. Call it clean lignite, the pride of Texas.”

  “Clean lignite,” Wasserman repeated. “Now that’s a word combination you don’t hear every day.”

  “If y’all have some free cash floatin’ around, you might think about investing in Texas lignite stock. After we get done rebranding, as they say, I’d be surprised if those stocks didn’t take off for the heavens.” The commissioner turned to Davis, who ignored the obvious insider trading remark. “How fast can you get caps on the other three stacks?”

  Davis knew the question was coming, and he was ready. “Commissioner, you’ll be happy to hear that I have three more caps sitting in a warehouse less than an hour away. As soon as Stan gives me the green light, we’ll get them installed faster than you can get the TV news cameras out here.”

  “I tell you, son, you readin’ my mind.”

  Having the air quality commissioner for the state of Texas standing right in front of him was an unexpected bonus. The timing was perfect. Davis reached into his pocket and pulled out a smaller version of the easily recognizable blue-and-orange cap. He held it up for both men to see.

  “What the hell, Davis?” Stan said. “You always carry one of these around to do your magician’s trick?”r />
  “The trick’s even better this time,” Davis said. “With the commissioner here, it’s a good time to unveil phase two of my plan.”

  Both men looked at the small PVC pipe, perplexed. It had none of the grand statement made by the huge cap on top of the smokestack. But once its purpose was understood, the little brother packed just as much punch.

  “Phase two goes way beyond power generation, beyond every industrial emission. Let me show you.” Davis opened the door to his rental car and pressed the start engine button. He closed the car door and, with the engine still running, walked to the rear bumper and bent down, coughing for effect. “Typical car exhaust. Plenty of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Bad stuff, even with today’s auto emissions standards.”

  He fitted the cap over the exhaust pipe and remained squatting, his head very near the exhaust pipe. He took a deep breath. “As fresh as a spring morning. Gentlemen, with the Garrity Exhaust Connector, that smog layer hovering over Houston that we’re all so familiar with? We’ll never see it again. I’ve already contracted with a company that can have a half million of these manufactured in a few weeks.”

  The commissioner seemed deep in thought. “Well, I’ll be damned. Same thing? Zero emissions?”

  “Yes, sir,” Davis answered.

  “No carbon at all?”

  “None.”

  “Jesus,” the commissioner said. He turned to Wasserman. “A two-for-one.” He rubbed his chin again. “Yeah… we could do some mighty fine promotions on this one. This little gadget on the tail end of every car makes good ol’ Texas gasoline a lot more attractive, plus it gets rid of the global warming thing all at the same time.”

  Wasserman laughed. “Damn, Ralph. Aren’t you the guy who says global warming is all a hoax?”

  “Hell, it’s just politics, Stan. We say what we say. But now… we got a chance to act. The public loves action.”

  Wasserman shook his head, a good-natured smile on his face. “You know, Ralph, the wonders of this world will never cease to amaze me.” He slapped the commissioner’s back. “Ralph Lewis, the face of the climate change deniers everywhere, is now going to be the world’s savior. The guy who solves global warming.”

  They were neglecting Davis’s role in world salvation, but it didn’t bother him in the least. Let the big dogs take credit—that was his motto. As long as their cash kept rolling in, it was all good.

  16

  Regulators

  Daniel Rice drove up the busy boulevard through Austin, Texas, crossing over the Colorado River. Dozens of gleaming office towers lined the other side of the river, and the Texas state capitol building loomed at the far end of the street. Austin wasn’t the modest city he remembered visiting as a child. Tourists still came to witness a million or more bats emerge each evening from crevices under the Congress Avenue bridge, and many of the older sections of downtown still had that 1970s look, but an entirely new business district had sprouted skyward over the years, giving Austin a big-city feel.

  A few minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot next to the J.J. Pickle Federal Building, one of those dated “modern” buildings from the age of Led Zeppelin and ABBA that now looked terribly out of place among the skyscrapers. In the lobby, he searched for Environmental Protection Agency on the list of agencies. Fifth floor.

  It felt good getting back to work. Real work. The kind that didn’t involve alien cyborgs or guest appearances on late-night television shows. His current assignment was positively dull by comparison, and in Daniel’s mind dull was just fine. The case was still related to the new dimensional technologies trail-blazed by Fermilab, but then maybe everything would be from here on out. The world had changed eight months prior. Science, culture, and business too.

  It was an unusual circumstance. The EPA had issued an air quality permit to a power plant in Texas. Nothing strange there. But the director at the EPA was concerned about this case, primarily because four more permit applications just like it had come in. It wasn’t every day that a major power plant proposed to redirect effluents into another dimension.

  The EPA was stumped. The proposal satisfied every regulation. It certainly wasn’t illegal dumping. Didn’t produce any hazards to flight, or wildlife, or water quality. The caps at the top of smokestacks weren’t even a visual eyesore. They had no reason to deny the permit—except that it didn’t feel right.

  The EPA administrator had called Spencer Bradley, the president’s national science advisor and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Bradley had put Daniel on the case.

  A scientific investigation. It was what Daniel did. Or at least, it was what he used to do before he’d become the primary representative of the human species to an alien civilization, before he’d conducted five Q&A sessions with Core, and before he had become the face of science to the general public. Even if the case was dull, it felt like coming home.

  This type of meeting was always tricky. Ostensibly, it was a technology review between the EPA and representatives from the power company. But in this case, the power company, ElecTrek Inc., had asked a contractor to represent them—the guy who had come up with the plan, Davis Garrity.

  The office of the EPA district manager, Jeffrey Finch, was small, with a dirty window overlooking an alley. Finch pushed an oversized paper across his desk to Daniel. It was a diagram of the power facility, showing an orange-and-blue cap at the top of each of three smokestacks. The cap made a right-angled turn with dashed lines indicating that it somehow disappeared into four-dimensional space.

  Daniel brushed his hair back with one hand as he examined the diagram. “Impressive, if it really works. They’ve tested this?”

  Finch, a younger man with curly hair and wire-rim glasses, sat back in his chair. “I’ve seen it myself. Amazing stuff. I really don’t understand how the 4-D part works, but the cap reduces the emissions to zero. The ElecTrek Bastrop County generating station is easily meeting every EPA standard—heck, zero is zero. They’re banking daily carbon offsets that are blowing every other utility out of the water.”

  Daniel looked up from the papers. “I know what the 4-D technology can do. It’s astonishing, no question. And maybe this pipe invention could work.” Daniel shook his head. “But damn, they got this system up and running fast. Have you reviewed the process they’re using to create this containment dome?” He pointed to the curving dashed line enveloping the power facility.

  “I haven’t,” Finch said. “Only the emissions control device, which in this case is the cap. It’s dead-simple: a twelve-foot-wide cover made from PVC. No moving parts, and it doesn’t affect the power plant’s function in any way. There’s really nothing else for us to review.”

  “There’s the four-dimensional space they’re using as a dumping ground.”

  Finch shook his head. “Our legal guy says that’s beyond scope. The Clean Air Act speaks to emissions control devices and air quality standards—in three-dimensional space, mind you. ElecTrek has fulfilled their obligation to demonstrate control and meet the standards. I don’t have the legal authority to ask them to do any more.”

  Daniel recognized the problem, an age-old dilemma of regulatory authority precisely constricted by the very legislation that had created the regulations in the first place. It would literally take another act of Congress to expand their authority to another dimension of space. Government oversight usually lagged well behind the pace of technology.

  Finch glanced at a message flashing on his phone. “One minute, Mr. Garrity just arrived.” He stepped away to an outer office and came back with two men in tow. He introduced Daniel to Davis Garrity and Ralph Lewis from the Texas CEQ. A Texas state official accompanying Garrity provided a big hint that the businessman had done his homework and established the right connections.

  “Nice to meet you, Dr. Rice,” Davis Garrity said. “I’ve seen you on TV talking about four-dimensional space, and in a very entertaining way, I might add. I do love your descriptions of this stran
ge outer space fellow you’ve been talking to. Quite the story.”

  “It is, Mr. Garrity,” Daniel answered. “Quite the story. But today I’m playing a different role, as a federal science investigator invited here by the EPA.”

  “Of course,” Garrity said. “I understand you have some questions about the ElecTrek project?”

  Before Daniel could respond, Lewis interjected. “We can save you and the feds a helluva lot of time. This whole thing’s gonna be on the local news tonight. The nice folks over at TV4 were all over it. Davis and I just got back from the Bastrop plant. Still no emissions. Clean as a whistle.”

  Daniel sat down and waited for the others to take a chair. The meeting wasn’t going to end until he had all the information he could gather, pleasantries notwithstanding.

  “Glad to hear,” Daniel said. “We all like clean power plants. Commissioner Lewis, I understand that your state agency had to sign off on the permit in addition to the EPA. Did anyone in your office conduct a review of the process that creates the containment dome over the ElecTrek facility?”

  “Not directly, no,” Lewis said. “Texas CEQ doesn’t regulate airspace, but we did pass the permit application along to the FAA. They declined to comment.”

  Daniel nodded. He could just imagine what people who regulated aviation safety thought about receiving an air quality permit application. “I’m not surprised. Not within their domain either. Gentlemen, it seems that we have multiple agencies, none of whom are responsible for examining this new technology.” He turned to Garrity. “Mr. Garrity, do you mind if I ask some questions about this process?”

  “I’ll do my best to answer,” Garrity responded.

  “Great. Let’s talk about neutrinos. To create four-dimensional space, you have to start with a coherent beam of neutrinos, right?” It was a fairly basic question, one that Daniel had explained multiple times in science programs targeted at high school–aged kids.